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California Golden Seals
The California Golden Seals were a team in the National Hockey League from Oakland, California that competed from 1967 to 1976. They were one of six teams added to the league as part of the 1967 NHL expansion. Initially named the California Seals, the team was renamed the Oakland Seals partway through the 1967–68 season (on December 8, 1967) and then to the California Golden Seals in 1970, after two games as the Bay Area Seals. In 1976, the franchise moved to Cleveland, Ohio where they became the Cleveland Barons. History In 1966, the NHL announced that six expansion teams would be added as a new division for the 1967–68 season, officially because of a general desire to expand the league to new markets, but also to squelch the Western Hockey League's threat to turn into a major league. The San Francisco Seals were one such team from the WHL. The NHL awarded an expansion team to Barry Van Gerbig for the San Francisco Bay area. Van Gerbig decided to purchase the WHL club with the intent of bringing them into the NHL as an expansion team the following season. Van Gerbig had planned to have the team play in a new arena in San Francisco, but the new arena was never built. He decided to move the team across the Bay from the Cow Palace in Daly City to Oakland to play in the new Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena. Van Gerbig renamed the club the California Seals; this was done in an attempt to appeal to fans from San Francisco, and to address complaints from the other NHL teams that Oakland was not considered a major league city and would not be a draw for fans. A year later, Van Gerbig brought the Seals into the NHL as an expansion team and retained a portion of the club's WHL roster such as Charlie Burns, George Swarbrick, Gerry Odrowski, Tom Thurlby & Ron Harris. While the Bay Area wasn't considered a particularly lucrative hockey market, the terms of a new television agreement with CBS called for two of the expansion teams to be located in California. While the WHL Seals had drawn well at the Cow Palace, the team drew poorly in Oakland once they entered the NHL and the plan to bring fans in from San Francisco failed. On November 6, 1967, Van Gerbig announced that the team's name would be changed to the Oakland Seals (although the NHL did not register the change until December) to focus more on the East Bay Team struggles The California Golden Seals were never successful at the gate even after the name change and because of this poor attendance, Van Gerbig threatened on numerous occasions to move the team elsewhere. First-year coach and general manager Bert Olmstead publicly advocated a move to Vancouver, but an offer from Labatt's brewery to purchase & relocate the team was rejected by the league along with a proposal to move the team to Buffalo from the Knox brothers, who had been shut out of the 1967 expansion. As it turned out, the NHL's 1970 expansion would include Vancouver and Buffalo. The Knoxes bought a minority share of the Seals in 1969, only to sell it a year later to fund the Buffalo Sabres; this (as well as the team's mediocre on-ice performance, led to major changes to both the Seals' front office and the roster. Only seven of the 20 Seals players remained after the first season. The new-look Seals were somewhat more successful, making the playoffs for two years, although with sub-.500 records; those were the only two years that the franchise made the playoffs. The league's rejection of a proposed move to Vancouver prompted a lawsuit that was not settled until 1974 (San Francisco Seals Ltd. v. National Hockey League). The Seals organization filed suit against the NHL claiming that the prohibition violated the Sherman Act. The team asserted that the NHL's constitution was in violation by prohibiting clubs from relocating their operations & that the relocation request was denied in an attempt to keep the San Francisco market in the NHL and thereby discourage the formation of a rival team or league in that location. The court ruled that the NHL was a single entity and that the teams were not competitors in an economic sense, so the league restrictions on relocation were not a restraint of trade. For the 1969–70 season, the Golden Seals were sold to Trans National Communications, whose investors included Pat Summerall & Whitey Ford; however, the group filed for bankruptcy after missing a payment and relinquished the team to Van Gerbig, who put the team back on the market. Charles O. Finley purchases the franchise Prior to the 1970–71 season, Charles O. Finley (the flamboyant owner of baseball's Oakland Athletics) purchased the Seals. Finley and Roller Derby boss Jerry Seltzer had both put in a bid on the team. Although Seltzer's offer was slightly better and included a more detailed plan for revival, a majority of NHL owners from the "old establishment" voted in favor of Finley.General manager Bill Torrey left by mid-season due to clashes with Finley. Finley renamed the team the Bay Area Seals to begin the 1970–71 season, but after just two games into the season on October 16, 1970, he changed the team name to the California Golden Seals, following a number of other marketing gimmicks intended to sell the team to the fans, among them changing the Seals' colors to green and gold to match those of the popular A's. The team's uniform crest was now the word "Seals" in a unique typeface, but an alternate logo using a sketch based on a photo of star player Carol Vadnais was used on marketing materials such as pennants, stickers and team programs. The original 1967 California Seals logo recolored in green and gold was often seen on trading cards & other unofficial material, but was never adopted by the team. The Seals are also remembered for wearing white skates, but initially Torrey convinced Finley to use green and gold painted skates instead, as team colored skates were a trend of the period; however, this was all for naught as the Seals finished with the worst record in the NHL that year. Other innovations that Finley's Seals incorporated, were the inclusion of player names on the back of the jersey, which then set the precedent for today's 31 current NHL teams identifying players in the same fashion. Finley also was the first owner to allow players to fly first class on commercial flights to games. The team regularly used the new Boeing 747s the airlines had put into service at the time. Finley also introduced the flamboyant green and gold "Seals luggage" which all players & coaches were required to carry to identify them as the northern California NHL team. On May 22, 1970, the Seals traded their pick in the first round of the 1971 NHL Amateur Draft to the Montreal Canadiens along with François Lacombe in return for Montreal's first round pick in the 1970 Draft (Seals selected Chris Oddleifson), Ernie Hicke, and cash. As a result of the Seals' dreadful season, the Canadiens had the top pick in the 1971 Draft, and used it to select future Hall of Famer Guy Lafleur; this transaction now ranks as one of the most one-sided deals in NHL history. Team under the ownership of the NHL and Mel Swig The Seals rebounded in the 1971–72 season, but the arrival of the World Hockey Association wiped out most of those gains. Finley refused to match the WHA's contract offers, causing five of the team's top ten scorers from the previous season to bolt to the new league. Devoid of any defensive talent save for goaltender Gilles Meloche, the Seals sank into last place again in 1973, where they would remain for the rest of their history. Although divisional restructuring in 1974 included a revamped format in which three teams in each division made the playoffs, the team's efforts were frustrated by their placement in the Adams Division, with the strong Sabres, Boston Bruins, and Toronto Maple Leafs of the day. Finley soon lost patience with his struggling hockey team, especially given the contrast to his World Series champion Athletics. He attempted to sell the Seals, but when no credible buyers came forward who were interested in keeping the team in the Bay Area, he sold the team back to the NHL for $6.585 million. A 1973 attempt by Finley to sell the team to Indianapolis interests who planned to relocate the team to that city was rejected by the NHL's Board of Governors. In early 1975, newspapers reported that the Seals and the Pittsburgh Penguins were to be relocated to Denver, Colorado and Seattle, Washington respectively in an arrangement that would have seen the two teams sold to groups in those cities that had already been awarded "conditional" franchises for the 1976–77 season. At the same time, the NHL announced that if the Seals' sale to the Denver group was not completed or new ownership found locally, the franchise would be liquidated at the end of the season. The Denver arrangement fell through and the league ran the Seals for more than a year until a group headed by San Francisco hotel magnate Melvin Swig bought the team in 1975 with the intention of moving the team to a proposed new arena in San Francisco. The Seals fell just short of the playoff and after a mayoral election, plans for the new arena were cancelled. With a new arena out of the picture, the NHL dropped their objection to the relocation of the franchise. The end of the Seals Although attendance was finally showing some improvement and the team playing better, minority owners George and Gordon Gund persuaded Swig to seek approval to move the team to their hometown of Cleveland. League approval for the move was granted on July 14, 1976, and the Seals were renamed the Cleveland Barons after the city's old AHL squad. After two more years of losses and with attendance worse than it had been in Oakland, the Gunds (by this time majority owners) were permitted to merge the Barons with another failing team, the Minnesota North Stars on June 14, 1978. The merged team continued as the Minnesota North Stars under the Gunds' ownership, but assumed the Barons' place in the Adams Division. The North Stars ultimately relocated to Texas following the 1992–93 season to become the Dallas Stars. The Cleveland Barons remain the most recent team in an established North American major professional league to fold. They were also the last actively playing NHL team to do so since the Brooklyn Americans in 1942 (the franchise was formally cancelled in 1946) and the last team to cease operations since the Montreal Maroons had their franchise formally canceled in 1947 (even though they had not iced a team since 1938). As a result, the NHL consisted of 17 teams for the 1978–79 season. Coaching History *1967-1968: Bert Olmstead *1968: Gord Fashoway *1968-1971: Fred Glover *1971-1972: Vic Stasiuk *1972: Garry Young *1972-1974: Fred Glover *1974-1975: Marshall Johnston *1975: Bill McCreary Sr. *1975-1976: Jack Evans Facts *Location: Oakland, California *Arena: Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena Category:Teams in California Category:National Hockey League teams